By Steve Ranger, 11 May 2006 12:05
NEWS
The UK's 200 largest publicly listed companies are wasting more than £61m per year between them by opting for power-hungry PCs and not switching them off at the end of the day.
The research investigated the energy consumption of the top 200 UK listed companies, based on the number of traditional desktops they operate daily, and calculated the potential energy savings that could be made if these were replaced with more energy efficient 'green PCs'.
The study - commissioned by Computacenter and Fujitsu Siemens Computers - claimed that adopting a 'greener' desktop strategy and better working practices can deliver significant financial savings and reduce the environmental burden.
For example, company policies could encourage employees to switch off their computers when not in use, or install software to turn off all idle PCs out of office hours.
Around a third of employees don't bother switching off their PCs when they leave the office.
The 200 companies collectively waste in excess of £61m of electricity per year - around 2.8 million kWh of energy. But by adopting green IT equipment and strategies they could each save £305,000 per year.
The largest of those 200 companies could save as much as £2m from their annual electricity bill, according to the study.
Ed Kenny, director of corporate hardware at Computacenter, said in a statement: "Our figures are conservative as they are based on PCs running at idle. Therefore, energy consumption on a day-to-day basis is actually likely to be significantly higher.
"Although technology can help companies realise cost savings and operational efficiencies, it is important that these are not achieved at the expense of the environment."
Plus: Is an IT power crisis affecting your business? Read our leader - and let us know what you think by posting a Reader Comment below or emailing editorial@silicon.com.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. RML
Switching off PCs at night is all well and good, but that may make it difficult to run overnight backups......
2. Roger Huffadine
OK - BUT the energy efficient PCs were not developed when the PCs referred to in this report were purchased. How much would it cost to replace them? Also how much more would it cost these companies if every time the network techies wanted to deploy new patches or applications they had to find every one of the thousands of PCs and turn them on - to later go and turn them off? My guess is the total bill would be more than the assumed energy cost.
3. Kevin McCourt
From an environmental standpoint, this is a good point. From a cost-savings and a computer management standpoint, I think the computers are best left on. Most computer maintenance, patch management, and software installation is done remotely overnight. A computer being off during this time has two adverse effects: One, it doesn't get updated, and two, a technician has to physically go to the computer to update it. The cost of electricity is nothing when compared to IT man-hours.
4. Stuart Holmes
Can Networked PC's be switched on remotly? At time of update IT staff could run a program to switch on pc's, run update and then shut down these machines. Saying that we need pc;s on 24/7 for the odd weekly update is arrogant! If pc's were switched off then a business will see at least a 50% reduction in their pc electric bill.
Place the PC electric bill into the IT budget and see how quickly their tune will change!
5. John Brooks
Oh dear - it's the old 'TVs and Hi-Fis left in standby waste all the output of a whole power station' argument applied to PCs...
Wrong! Virtually all the power consumed by a PC left on is converted to HEAT - which heats the building. Same applies to TVs in standby - the heat might be 'useful' and might reduce the use of other heat sources in winter.
But in reality it's probably much WORSE waste than the report suggests: not only are the PCs pushing out (unnecessary?) heat; chances are the building is also being cooled by an AC system, which uses a LOT more energy than all the PCs!!!
Anyway, virtually ALL PCs have power management, which quiesces the processor and shuts down the hard disks. Why are these features not being used?
6. anonymous
Haven't any of you "IT Specialist" clowns heard of Wake on Lan? PCs don't have to be left on all day to get their software upgrades/patches done at night, and haven't had to for a good few years.
7. anonymous
Wake On LAN is a good thing, but is not native to NT4.0. You need at least XP on the desktop and the network management software to send out the 'Magic Packet' to wake the desktops. The hard part is to get users to remember to log off and let an idle timer shut down the PC or to get them to 'Turn Off' at the end of the working day. In our business users are too lazy, or stupid to do so.